“Watch out for those chairs,” Luke calls out.
“Shut up,” I call back.
But I can’t help but laugh.
* * *
Eventually, of course, word gets out at the office that Luke and I are going on vacation together. And suddenly everyone is smiling at us in this super annoying, cloying way. They smile at us as if we’ve just announced that we’re running off to get married—or, at the very least, that we’re in love.
“Hawaii is so romantic,” Lucinda says to me at lunch. “You two are going to have the best time.”
“We’re looking forward to it,” I say.
“Beau proposed to me in Hawaii, you know. And we hadn’t been dating that long, either. Just like the two of you.”
“Is that so,” I say.
“Oh, Emma,” says Lucinda, cartoon hearts practically floating up around her head, “wouldn’t that be amazing if you came back engaged?”
Okay. I admit it. I feel pretty bad that we’re lying to our coworkers. Yeah, it’s just a dumb relationship. But still. With every additional day that passes, I feel more and more guilty about it. And I’ve been looking more and more forward to our post-vacation breakup, when things will go back to normal.
Well, I guess it won’t be normal normal. Not right away. For a while, Luke and I will have to act freshly broken up—amicably broken up, but broken up nonetheless. For a while, we’ll have to fake just the right amount of awkwardness around each other. After that, though, things can go back to normal. The two of us can go back to being just friends, he can go back to pursuing Erin from Accounting again, and I can go back to…well, my normal life.
Which sounds perfectly fine to me.
Later that same week, I’m in the middle of working on a report at my desk when I look up and see Paige’s grinning face hovering over my cubicle wall. I flinch, caught off guard. Why does Paige have to act so weird all the time?
“Yes?” I say. “Can I help you?”
“I have something for you,” she says.
Please don’t let it be something edible. Please don’t let it be something edible.
Thankfully, it’s not. But I can’t tell what it is. The object that Paige is holding up is no bigger than the size of her hand. It’s rectangular. It’s neon red. It’s…
“An umbrella,” Paige says. “For your trip.”
“Oh,” I say, taking it from her. “Um, thanks.”
She does know that we’re going to Hawaii, right?
“As you can see,” continues Paige. “It’s very, very compact. You’ll be amazed, though, Emma, by how much it expands when you open it up. Go ahead, give it a try.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I say.
“No, really! Open it up. I want to make sure it’s working okay. It’s been a while since I’ve used it, and you know how umbrellas can get. I’d feel bad if I let you borrow it only for it to malfunction.”
I stand up, because I can see that she’s going to keep insisting if I don’t, and hold the tiny umbrella up in the air. I press the button on it with my thumb. The umbrella emits a faint click and then expands to an admittedly impressive size, immediately shading the space around me.
Everyone around us turns to look. Everyone except for Paige gives me a look that says, Um, why did you just open an umbrella indoors?
Quickly, I close the umbrella.
“Thanks again,” I tell Paige.
“No worries,” she says. “Fun fact: petrichor means the smell of the rain.”
* * *
I spend the week before our trip prepping for it. I write up a packing list, then a shopping list. I buy new sunscreen. I buy new lip balm with SPF. I do a practice pack, just to make sure everything fits in my luggage—including the umbrella from Paige. Three days before we leave, I call my credit card companies to let them know when and where I’ll be. Afterward, I remind Luke to do the same.
“Okay, Mom,” he says.
Well, fine. I won’t try to be helpful, then.
The day before our trip, I take pictures of my credit cards and driver’s license, just in case, and then settle into the couch and let my television drone on in the background while I give myself a pedicure. It actually turns out pretty decent, if I say so myself. I only have to redo two of my toes.
That night, when I get into bed, I feel as ready as I’m ever going to be. There is absolutely nothing left to do but sleep. But sleep, apparently, is the one thing my body refuses to do. All I can do is lay there, overwhelmed by anxiety. What the hell do I think I’m doing? This whole thing is crazy. It’s never going to work. And Luke is already getting on my nerves—how am I going to fake being into him for the next week? There’s no way my family’s going to buy it. Not to mention that either Luke or I will probably slip up and say something that gives it all away.
You need to call this whole thing off, I tell myself. Drowsily, I reach for my phone.
But whatever I think I’m going to do, I fall asleep before I can do it.
9
Luke is already in the Uber when it picks me up the next morning. And by morning, I mean the cruel hour of 4 a.m. As I drag my stiff zombie body out to the car, I curse myself for booking us an early morning flight. And for living so far away from the airport. And for agreeing to share an Uber with Luke, because it means I can’t nap my way through the ride.
I lower myself into the back seat and mumble good morning to Luke. He replies with a much-too-chipper good morning back at me. When I glance over, I see that he is irritatingly well-rested. Not a smidge of puffiness under his too-alert eyes.
“Did you go to bed yesterday afternoon or something?” I say, fighting off a yawn.
“Nine o’clock,” he says.
“Sleeping pills?”
He laughs. “I went for a long run after dinner. That wiped me out. It’s what I always do when I have to get up extra early.”
“Aren’t you smart,” I say dryly.
At least our driver isn’t chatty. In fact, he says a grand total of six words: good morning, what airline?, and safe travels.
Five-star rating earned.
It’s a quarter to five when we get to the airport, a bit after six by the time we get through security. After we put our shoes back on—Luke, of course, has worn very easy-to-slip-on shoes, while I’m wearing strappy sandals that take eons to put back on—Luke cracks his neck and says, “You hungry? Want to find some breakfast?”
“God yes,” I say.
Ten minutes later, we’re in the food court surveying our options. Only a few of the vendors are open yet, since it’s still so early, and of those open, there’s clearly one that’s the most popular. Our fellow early morning travelers have formed a curving line leading up to it that has begun to encroach on a neighboring vendor’s space.
“Looks like breakfast burritos,” says Luke. “I’m going to get one of those. You?”
“I think I’m just going to get coffee and a muffin or something,” I say, blinking blearily toward the coffee place on the other side of the food court.
Without another word, we go our separate ways. I stumble across the food court and get in line. I assume that I’ll be done way faster than Luke. But of course there’s some new guy working the counter who has to ask his supervisor a question every ten seconds, and then there’s some problem with the register, and by the time it’s my turn to order, Luke already has his breakfast burrito in hand and has picked out a table for us.
And he is…flirting?…with the woman sitting at the next table over? From here, it sure looks that way. He’s flashing that stupid smile of his. Making her laugh. Making her tuck her hair behind her ear.
“Ma’am?” the barista says.
I snap out of it. I return my attention to the barista. “Right,” I say. “An Americano, please. With an extra shot.” My eyes roam over the display case. I catch a distorted reflection of myself, with my horribly messy topknot and puffy morning face. “And a blueberry muffin.”
Luke is still talking to the woman when I walk up to the table a few minutes later. He doesn’t even notice me approach. I clear my throat and pull out a chair, dragging the feet on the tiles.
“Hey,” he says, straightening up in his chair. “Got your coffee?”
“Uh huh,” I say, sitting down.
“Good. I was worried something was wrong. It was taking you a while.”
I glance at the woman at the next table over, but she’s pretending like she’s in the middle of reading something very interesting on her phone. I lean across the table and whisper to Luke, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?” he asks. He sinks his teeth into his burrito, clearly taking a huge bite to buy himself time.
“You were flirting,” I whisper.
He chews and swallows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know what I saw.”
He stares at me for a second, then lowers his voice to a whisper, too. “This is fake, remember?”
“Fine,” I say, leaning back. “Flirt away.” I rip off a piece of blueberry muffin and chew it furiously. I know I’m acting childish, but I’m running on three hours of sleep.
We eat in silence for a few minutes. Then Luke says, “You’ve got a little—” and reaches across the table and paws at my face.
I jerk away. “What are you doing?”
“You have blueberry juice or something on your face.”
I grab a napkin and swipe at my cheek. “Then just tell me that I do.”
“Jeez. Sorry.”
I sigh. I really need to calm down. “No. I’m sorry. I just don’t do well on such little sleep.”
“I’ll say.”
I kick him under the table.
“Oof,” he says, fake-wincing. “What have you got on, Armstrong? Steel-toe boots?”
“Very funny.”
Luke takes another bite of his burrito, chews, swallows. He wipes his mouth off with a paper napkin and clears his throat. “By the way. Just so we’re on the same page. How serious is this relationship?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, obviously, it’s serious enough to invite me along on your family vacation. But is it…I dunno. I guess I’m asking, are we in love?”
What sort of question is that? I tear off another nub of blueberry muffin and crumbs scatter everywhere.
“You really think that’s going to come up?” I ask.
“Probably not. But whether or not we are will inform how I act around you.”
It isn’t something I’ve considered before. But now that he’s asked the question, I know the answer. Of course I want him to act like he’s in love with me. It’s one thing to show off a boyfriend to my family. It’s another to show off a completely smitten one.
I shrug casually. “Okay. Sure. We are.”
“Roger that,” says Luke, and crams the last bites of breakfast burrito into his mouth.
The airplane is chock-full of couples besotted with each other. I’ve counted at least four pairs of newlyweds. They’re easy to spot, with their newly lovestruck eyes and traces of bridal makeup still aglow on the women’s cheekbones. Peppered in among the newlyweds are the older couples, the empty nesters who also somehow look freshly in love.
Ugh.
I hate them all.
Because for the first time since this whole thing started, I wish I was going to Hawaii with a real boyfriend. I wish I was actually in love. On the plus side, I’ve got the window seat. So I have that going for me, I guess.
Twenty minutes into our flight, after the initial thrill-and-terror of liftoff has subsided and the boredom of reaching cruising altitude has arrived, two impeccably dressed stewardesses maneuver the refreshment cart down the aisle. Luke gets coffee. I ask for a can of ginger ale. After the stewardesses move on, Luke turns to me and says, “You get motion sickness?”
“No,” I say, cracking open the can. “Why?”
“You’re drinking ginger ale.”
“It’s what I always get.” I shrug. “The first time I flew, when I was five or six or something, I didn’t know what I wanted to drink, so my mom got a ginger ale for me. It’s been my in-flight drink of choice ever since.”
“Ah,” says Luke, a smile creeping across his face. “I see.”
“What? What’s so amusing about that?”
“Nothing.”
God, is he irritating. But I don’t feel like getting into a whole thing with him right now. I tear open the little packet of honey roasted nuts that the stewardess handed over with the drink. There’s a whopping six nuts inside, and I try to make each one last as long as possible. But soon there’s nothing but nut dust left. And then not even that, thanks to a saliva-wetted finger and my own lack of dignity.
“Want the rest of mine?” Luke asks.
For a second, I think he’s making fun of me. Mocking me for practically licking the inside of the packet. But then I see that he’s sincerely offering me the rest of his almonds. All three of them.
“Don’t you want them?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says. “I’m good.”
I take them from him with a mumbled thank you. We finish our refreshments in silence. After handing our trash to the stewardess and returning our trays to their upright and locked position, Luke stands up to fish through his carry-on in the overhead compartment and pulls out two small navy blue pouches.
“Neck pillow?” he says, holding one out to me as he sits back down.
“Um…sure,” I say, stunned that he has packed something like this. No, make that stunned that he has packed two of them. Did he buy them especially for this trip? I uncinch the pouch and pull out the deflated pillow. It’s impossible to tell if it’s brand new or not. What am I even looking for—another woman’s stray hair? A lipstick stain?
“You have to blow into it,” says Luke. He flips it around in my hands and points to the valve. “Right there.”
“I know how to do it,” I say. “I’m just surprised that you brought these.”
He has no response. He’s now too busy emptying his lungs into his own pillow. I put my lips to the plastic valve on mine and do the same. When we’re done, we don our inflated pillows and settle in for the next several hours of the flight.
I, of course, end up dozing off, despite my best efforts to stay awake. It’s a surprisingly pleasant nap, thanks to the soft companionship of the pillow. It feels as if hours and hours pass by. And while asleep, I have a dream that I’m sitting on top of a huge, velvety apricot, drifting through the heavens like it’s the most normal thing in the world. But just as I’m about to lean down and take a bite out of the ripe flesh of the fruit, I’m woken with a jolt—then wrenched into hyperawareness by another one.
Here’s something you should know about me: every time I fly, I secretly resign myself to the belief that the plane I’m on is going to crash. Yeah, I know. Statistically, flying is safer than driving, turbulence is harmless, so on and so forth. I’ve heard it all. But when the bumpy ride kicks in, and the Fasten Seatbelt sign lights up with that alarming little angry chime, all my rationality is blinded by panic. Suddenly, all I can think about is how insanely high up in the air we are.
I mean, why can’t airplanes fly at, like, a more reasonable height?
The cabin shudders again, and instinctively, I reach out and grab Luke’s hand. I’m not even thinking about the fact that it’s his hand. It’s just a hand, as far as I’m concerned.
“Man, look how much the wing’s bouncing,” says Luke.
My eyes snap open. There is no bouncing wing. Just Luke, totally unperturbed, smiling at me with amusement.
“Damn it, Luke,” I murmur. I tear my hand from his. I close my eyes and lean back into the headrest, willing it to stop moving.
“We’re fine,” says Luke. “Stop freaking out.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“And what would be helpful, Armstrong?”
I breathe out. “Distract
ion.”
“Right. Want me to read aloud to you from the in-flight magazine? Tell you a knock-knock joke? Give you math equations to work out?” Then his voice gets closer. Softer. Sultry, almost. “Or, come to think of it, you know what would be a really good distraction…”
My eyes snap open. I look over at him. He’s grinning like an idiot. He’s just messing with me, of course. But I have to admit it. It works. I’m no longer thinking so direly about the impending catastrophe of our plane. Now I’m thinking about how disturbing it would be to join the mile high club with Luke.
Overhead, the captain comes on the intercom and assures us that there are clear skies ahead.
“Guess we missed our chance,” says Luke.
“Oh, shut up,” I tell him.
“Hey, I was just doing what you asked me to.”
I rub my temples. “Please just stop, Luke.”
Soon, as promised, the turbulence dies down. The next hour is smooth as silk. I spend most of it looking out the window, watching the clouds suspended over the ocean, grateful to be alive.
During the last half hour of the flight, I dig my cosmetic pouch out of my carry-on and attempt to make myself look a little more decent. I’m finishing up applying blush to my cheeks when I notice that Luke is staring at me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“My…makeup?” I say.
“I know,” he says. “But why? You looked fine.”
“Gee. Thanks. I’ve always wanted to look fine.”
Luke sighs. “I meant that you didn’t need to put on that stuff. I meant that you already looked good.”
“Okay, for future reference?” I say. “It’s much better to tell a girl she looks good versus telling her she looks fine.”
“You don’t normally wear this much makeup at work.”
“No. But I’m not at work. I’m on vacation.”
“Yeah, a beach vacation,” he says. “With your family. And a fake boyfriend who you don’t need to impress.”
I don’t need to explain myself to him. And I’m certainly not going to take beauty advice from him. I begin to carefully apply eyeshadow to my lids, picking a shimmery peach tone from the mini-palette I’ve brought along. It’s my favorite shade, even if the shimmery-ness sometimes gets into my eyes.
Emma and Luke Are Totally Together Page 7